UK has the chance to be a leader in safer “vice” products post-Brexit, Adam Smith Institute argues

The UK has the opportunity to become a “world leader” in reducing the risks of smoking and drinking by cutting regulation around safer “vice” products, a new paper has argued.

Tobacco-industry-funded think tank the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) has recommended the government replaces “self-defeating regulation” on products such as e-cigarettes and hangover-free synthetic alcohol with a system of “permissionless innovation”.

Coach David Moyes will decide whether to discipline footballer Patrick van Aanholt after a photograph emerged of him allegedly smoking a shisha pipe just over a month before he was pulled out of the Sunderland team over concerns about his heart.

A new study led by researchers at San Diego State University finds that even six months after people within a home stop smoking, the home, as well as the nonsmokers living there, still show elevated levels of carcinogens linked to cigarettes.

Researchers have known for some time that thirdhand smoke, as this leftover residue is known, sticks around in the environment long after the smoke has cleared. SDSU’s team of tobacco researchers, chemists, and environmental scientists are among the leaders in the field exploring the properties and dangers of thirdhand smoke. Previously published work has shown that unsuspecting nonsmokers are likely to be exposed to thirdhand smoke when they move into a new apartment, stay at a hotel, visit a casino and rent a car. Little was known about what happens to the thirdhand smoke that has built up in the homes of smokers after they quit.

Budget Secretary Christian Eckert has announced a 15% rise on rolling tobacco. The move aims to align taxation with that of ready made cigarettes.

Eckert has also announced a levy on the revenues of Logista, the tobacco industry distributor. He estimates this could bring in over €100m to the state coffers.

Source: Le Point – 23 September 2016
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South Korea: Philip Morris, British American Tobacco rake in billions from tax evasion

The local affiliates of Phillip Morris and British American Tobacco (BAT) were found to have evaded over 200 billion won ($181 million) in taxes from inventory profits when the Korean government raised the tax levied on cigarettes by roughly 2,000 won in January 2015.

According to Korea’s Board of Audit and Inspection, the tobacco giants stockpiled inventory in 2014 to unusual levels and gained massive profits the following year with the increase in cigarette prices.

The two companies took advantage of the fact that cigarette taxes are levied not when they’re sold to consumers, but when they’re shipped out from production facilities, and reported their shipments in advance to benefit from a lower tax rate.

A new mass-media campaign by JTI-MacDonald is suggesting that plain packaging for cigarettes doesn’t work.

JTI-MacDonald is claiming plain packaging will make it easier for criminals to sell cheap, illegal tobacco. However, Jenny Byford with the Canadian Cancer Society feels it’s part of just another campaign of misinformation. “The tobacco industry has tried to use the counterfeit argument to stop tobacco control effort in the past from everything to use it against health warnings, retail display bans, bans on flavoured tobacco and tobacco tax increases.”

She adds the tobacco industry can’t be believed on the contraband issue, given that all three major companies in Canada have been convicted of contraband in 2008 and 2010.

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